Contesting Austerity

Despite the historical and political similarities between Portugal and Spain, the contentious responses to austerity diverged in terms of number, rhythm and players. This book compares the contentious responses to austerity in Portugal and Spain during the Eurozone crisis and the Great Recession between 2008 and 2015. While in Spain a sustained wave of mobilisation lasted for three years, involving various players and leading to a transformation of the party system, in Portugal social movements were only able to mobilise in specific instances, trade unions dominated protest and, by the end of the cycle, institutional change was limited. Contesting Austerity shows that the different trajectories and outcomes in these two countries are connected to the nature and configurations of the players in the mobilisation process. While in Spain actors’ relative autonomy from one another led to deeper political transformation, in Portugal the dominance of the institutional actors limited the extent of that change.

The Work Environment of Immigrant Employees in Sweden—a Systematic Review

The aim of this systematic review was to summarize and synthesize research results focusing on the work environment of employees with an immigrant background in Sweden. We focus on the main conditions identified in the working environment of immigrant employees and how these conditions may affect their health and well-being. The concept of “minority stress” and the attachment theory are used to understand and interpret the findings. We systematically searched for literature published between the years of 1990 and 2020 in four databases, Web of Science, PubMed, SocIndex, and Academic Search Elite. We started the selection process by reading title and abstracts, then proceeded to read a selection of full-text studies and eliminated those that did not fulfil the inclusion criteria. We did a quality assessment on the full-text studies based on the MMAT-tool, and then performed a narrative synthesis of the results. The results show that immigrants experience several stressors in their work environment, including physical, psychological, and social risks. These risks are, among other things, associated with the nature of the jobs that immigrants are overrepresented in, with minority-related stressors such as discrimination, harassment, and threats on the basis of ethnic background, and with the lack of social support from managers and colleagues. Results also highlight beneficial factors in the immigrants’ working environment and show the importance of a supportive, inclusive, and empowering management. Our main conclusion is that Swedish workplaces need to introduce more active measures to raise awareness of and combat workplace discrimination, work harder to promote inclusion at the workplace, and eliminate physical, psychological, and social health hazards specific to immigrant employees. The leadership and management have an important role to play here, as does the employees’ trade unions and its special functions.

Rethinking the Communication with the Unions Members in the New Context

Additional to the three main trends influencing social dialogue at the organizational level - de-centralization, up-scaling, de-institutionalization and representation – the COVID-19 pandemic rules brought a new influence that impacts the Unions, forcing it to adapt its internal communication. This paper is centred upon the way the Unions members in Romania get access to information in the new labour landscape, characterized by the work from home and physical distancing. The research focuses on a collective case-study of three strong Union Federations that developed internal communication with unions’ members that fits the pandemic context. The research focuses on the internal communication repertoire elements used by the Unions. The research method assesses the qualitative information gathered by interviewing key Unions representatives. The main areas of interest are the key topics addressed in the communication with the members, the tools and media mix used, the frequency of the formal communication with the trade unions members, the accountable and the responsible persons with the internal communication, and the management of the feedback from the members, all in the context of what is different vs. 2019. The conclusions are enriched with some recommendations for future development of communication with union members, supporting the social dialog.

Can labor-standards advocacy by transnational civil society organizations interact with the power of labor to improve labor standards in global supply chains? A case study of the Cambodian garment industry

Recent research shows that the focus of labor-standards advocacy by transnational civil society organizations (CSOs) has shifted to building the organizational capacity of workers’ organizations in developing countries, suggesting cooperation between transnational CSOs and local trade unions potentially improving working conditions in global supply chains. However, scant attention has been paid to how the two actors interact in practice. Based on fieldwork in Cambodia, including in-depth interviews with garment sector stakeholders, this article examines the interaction between transnational CSOs and trade unions in improving working conditions in the garment industry. The data analysis shows that transnational CSOs and trade unions have distinct comparative advantages in improving working conditions. Rather than the conflicting relationship between CSOs and trade unions as suggested in the literature, this article demonstrates a complementary relationship between the two, indicating the significance of the cooperation between these actors in improving working conditions within global supply chains.

Combatting exploitation of migrant temporary agency workers through sectoral self-regulation in the UK and the Netherlands

The recent growth of precarious work has sparked a vivid debate on whether this tendency can be reversed by the social partners through sectoral self-regulation. In this sectoral case study of the temporary work agencies sector in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the views, approaches, power and interaction between trade unions and employers’ organizations are studied in the context of increasing labour migration in the decade following European Union enlargement. The results show that the employers’ organizations have been leading actors in self-regulation, seeking collaboration with trade unions in the Netherlands. In both countries, trade unions have taken an inclusive approach but had little power to affect the deterioration of employment conditions. It has proven difficult to the social partners to reverse the process of increasing precarious work and exploitation. Strict regulatory frameworks imposed by the government are needed to turn a vicious circle into a virtuous one.

Socio-Political Considerations of Informing Technology in the 21st Century

This chapter addresses socio-political issues surrounding informing technology in the 21st century. The chapter begins by considering the role that computers and informing technology have played in US elections. The chapter then critically examines what prosperity informing technology and turbo-capitalism has brought society. Next, global indexes that measure human well-being are considered within the broader context of growing economic equalities. The role that trade unions play in such measures is also considered. The chapter next considers the relationship between informing technology and the deep web and dark webs as well as its relation to corruption. Attention is then paid to the relation between informing technology and democracy as well as the socio-political impacts of hackers. The chapter concludes by considering the role informing technology has played in dictatorships and its role in the 2020 coronavirus pandemic as well as the positive impacts of hackers.

Participation Sphere

In the context of Portuguese teacher unions, the adoption of information and communication technologies is nowadays a reality. This chapter presents a brief analysis of e-participation and e-democracy, proposes a conceptual communication model for digital mediation on teachers' trade unions, and addresses an initiative carried out by the most representative teacher's union of Portugal. This proposal is based on social media principles, designed to gather teachers and unions in a shared deliberative space. The Liberopinion platform enables effective participation in formal and informal decision-making processes via the Internet, with full integration into any Website. It is improved to support Participatory budgeting. The actors were chosen from the National Federation of Teachers due to its representativeness regarding associate teachers and provide an opportunity to assess the platform potential to support participation in a union context.

Mapping domestic workers’ organizing globally

Domestic workers face challenges for organizing, e.g. decentralization of the workforce, nature of the employment relationship. This article analyses, based on a multiple country-comparison, how domestic workers organize despite constrictions. We identify three forms of organizing: the trade union model and the association model (Shireen Ally). We propose, though, an additional third model, the ‘hybrid type’: domestic workers organize ‘amongst themselves’ in associations and at the same time these associations are linked to or integrated into trade unions, which provides representation, services and contact with other workers. Related to this finding, we see a trend of an ‘emerging trade unionism’. Which means that we tend to find more trade union-related forms of organizing than a decade ago. One explanatory factor is the “governance struggle” of winning the International Labour Organization’s Convention “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” in 2011, which led to an increased collaboration and trust-building between organized domestic workers and trade unions.

TRADE UNIONS AND BASIC INCOME: SOME DANISH EXPERIENCES

Theoretically, there are many good arguments that unions should support a proposal on basic income. The main reason for the Danish trade unions resistance to basic income reform is that it would go against the short-term interest of the unions in organisational self-maintenance. Trade unions will lose power in relation to their members with a basic income. Trade unions have control over individual members by virtue of the collective agreement system and the labour law system. If you have a basic income system, the individual worker will decide when he or she wants to leave his workplace and strike. Suppose a single worker or a group of workers leave their workplace because of dissatisfaction with the working condition. In that case, they will be punished financially according to the rules of labour law rely on any support from their trade union.